Birmingham Public Library offers free screenings of civil-rights film 'The Barber of Birmingham'

James Armstrong's barbershop was a hub of activity during the civil-right movement. (Birmingham News/Michelle Campbell)

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- If you missed “The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement” when it debuted here at the Alabama Theatre last year, or when it appeared on PBS earlier this month, you have yet another chance to see the Academy Award-nominated documentary.

Several chances, in fact.

The Birmingham Public Library will screen co-directors Gail Dolgin and Robin Fryday’s short film about Birmingham barber and civil-rights activist James Armstrong at 13 of its branches in September and October.

Armstrong, who filed suit to desegregate Birmingham’s public-school system in 1957 and eight years later, on Bloody Sunday, carried the American flag at the head of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march, died in 2009 at age 86.

For half-a-century, Armstrong’s Smithfield barbershop was a hub of activity, a place where civil-right organizers gathered in the 1950s and '60s, and in later years, where his customers met to talk politics — but only, as Armstrong decreed, if they were registered to vote.

Although he lived to see Barack Obama elected as the first black president of the United States, Armstrong died before “The Barber of Birmingham” was finished.